This article examines how authoritarian elites manage the quest for political participation of moderate Islamist groups in view of securing regime persistence. Through a comparative analysis of the logics of two cases-the Moroccan Movement of Unity and Reform (MUR) and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood-it aims to understand the key factors accounting for differences in form and evolution of the respective containment strategies. The MUR was formally included into parliament and electoral processes. In contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood remains illegal, was tolerated on an informal basis only and subject to a repressive backlash in the 1990s. Therefore, whereas both regimes have yielded to the movements' demands for political participation, the mechanisms (formal vs. informal) and the developments (protracted vs. reversed) show marked differences. Starting from the assumption that the chosen mechanisms result from the rulers' risks perception, the comparison shows that the rulers' choices are predominantly shaped by the institutional setting of the respective authoritarian systems (monarchic vs. presidential) and influenced by the strength of an Islamist organisation relative to other opposition forces. As to the different developments, it is argued that continuity or the reversal of an inclusivist experiment is the result of the ruler's assessment of the success of the experiment. Inclusion is continued if it contributes to regime stability through the Islamists' compliance with the rules of the game or, at least, if it does not impact negatively on the latter. If, instead, the Islamist challenge increases over time, inclusion is abandoned and replaced by a largely repressive containment strategy.
